“Worst Year Ever”: The Chinese Ban on US Agricultural Products Will Be a Death Blow for Countless US Farms

The straw that breaks the camel's back

U.S. farmers have never experienced a year quite like this. During the first half of 2019, endless rain and unprecedented flooding were the major problems.  As a result of the incredibly wet conditions, millions of acres of prime farmland didn’t get planted at all, and tens of millions of other acres are going to yield a lot less than usual.

Even without anything else happening, we were going to see farm bankruptcies soar to absolutely crazy levels, but now the Chinese government is essentially cutting off U.S. agricultural imports. This will greatly depress the prices that U.S. farmers get for their crops, and so many farmers that were still hoping to squeeze out a profit for this year will be hit with a loss instead.

Ultimately, the truth is that 2019 is going to be a death blow for countless U.S. farmers that were barely hanging on financially after a string of really tough years. Many will leave the industry entirely and never go back to farming again, and our nation will be worse off because of it.

When the Chinese announced that they were going to completely stop buying U.S. agricultural products, it sent shockwaves across the middle portion of the country. According to the executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau, our farmers and ranchers will now be facing “just a really tough, tough time”

“This is a body blow to farmers and ranchers all across the country,” Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau, told FOX Business. “That’s one of the things that we are feeling the effects of, and this is on top of a year when mother nature has been a terrible business partner in many parts of the country. It’s just a really tough, tough time for farmers and ranchers in this country.”

Shares of industrial, farming, oil and transportation companies have plummeted, a direct result of the increased tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

Of course President Trump is trying to be upbeat and he is promising that the Chinese will not be able to hurt our farmers, but the truth is that they already have.

Chinese imports of U.S. agricultural products fell by more than half from 2017 to 2018, and now they are going to zero. The following comes from Fox Business

Despite Trump’s tweet, American farmers now stand to lose all of what was a $9.1 billion market in 2018, which was down sharply from the $19.5 billion U.S. farmers exported to China in 2017.

Unfortunately for U.S. farmers, they are caught right in the middle of a tug of war between the Chinese government and President Trump, and China specifically went after U.S. farmers in order to hurt Trump politically

China’s new agricultural ban has an additional benefit to the Chinese of maximizing negative political impact to Trump.

Important presidential election swing states in the Midwest grain belt such as Iowa and Wisconsin were vital to his 2016 election victory. Cutting this particular area of bilateral trade at a time when American farmers are recovering from the after-effects of this year’s floods is a potent way for Beijing to punch back against President Trump’s new tariffs.

If the presidential election was held this November, it would be really difficult for Trump to win in Iowa in Wisconsin.  Of course much can change between now and November 2020, but right now Trump is definitely losing support in the middle of the country.

Speaking of Wisconsin, it just happens to be one of the states that currently has the highest number of farm bankruptcy filings

Since last June, there have been a staggering 535 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, a 13 percent increase. Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin had the highest number of filings.

As a result, Congress passed the Family Farmer Relief Act to update the eligibility requirements for Chapter 12 bankruptcy, raising the debt limit from $4.1 million to $10 million — giving more farmers the chance to declare bankruptcy, thereby offering their producers and creditors a better chance to recognize and avoid mass liquidation.

President Trump will try to keep as many farms going as possible with his massive aid packages, but the truth is that even with those aid packages it is inevitable that farm bankruptcies will continue to surge.

In fact, they are already at the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.

What U.S. farmers really need is an end to the trade war and for the Chinese to start buying from them again.

Sadly, that is just not going to happen. At this point, even Goldman Sachs is admitting that there will not be a trade deal with China before the 2020 presidential election…

Analysts at Goldman Sachs no longer think the U.S. and China will manage to negotiate a trade deal ahead of the 2020 presidential election — which is more than 15 months away.

“We had expected a final round of tariffs targeting remaining Chinese imports at a 10 percent rate,” the analysts, led by chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius, wrote in a note to clients. “But news since President Trump’s tariff announcement last Thursday indicates that U.S. and Chinese policymakers are taking a harder line, and we no longer expect a trade deal before the 2020 election.”

This means that things will continue to go from bad to worse for U.S. farmers, and this will take a major toll on the U.S. economy as a whole.

We have entered the time of “the perfect storm”, and things are definitely not going to get any easier in the months ahead.

I wish that I had better news for you, but I don’t. Global events are starting to greatly accelerate, and so many of the things that we have been warned about are starting to happen right in front of our eyes.

Source: The Economic Collapse

14 Comments
  1. Vish says

    America never learns: You wage (economic or military) wars, don’t whine like a bitch when the other side fights back against you.

    When you point your gun at the other guy, he can turn around and fire it at you.

    Better to have let sleeping dogs lie and not launch these wars in the first place.

    Now, however, America will reap what is has sown: painful economic blowback from yet another morally bankrupt America war.

  2. Garry Compton says

    The big question is where is China subsidizing its agri products from?

    1. Mary E says

      Canada is the beneficiary of trump’s malfeasance in this trade war…

      1. DarkEyes says

        Canada is not exactly a comfortable trading partner for China.
        Lookup what Canada did against China in the not so long ago past.

  3. Mary E says

    It makes one question the intelligence of economic moves made by the US administration, which seems to continue getting the US into negative situations that only the administration can get it out of….what is the reasoning behind these ludicrous tariffs? If you asked Trump, he would say to get the Chinese into a position of having to make a deal favorable to the US….Well, captain, you are totally off base on that…you and the US lose…big time…because of your stupidity and greed..

    1. DarkEyes says

      Metrhinks, Mr Trump is just following orders assisted by his strong team of special advisers with Jared of Arabia and Princess Ivanka from Ling to Schmetter Ling.

  4. John C Carleton says

    Part of the plan for generations coming from Washington DC, was to force independent or family farmers into bankruptcies so the pedophile Usury “bankers” could steal their farms they were forced to operate on Usury credit.

    This works right into DC’s plans to steal yet more farmland from Americans, transfer the Land to foreign Pedophile Usury “bankers”.

    Nothing to see here, just DC at work, move along!

    1. Ilya says

      It shows because financiers capable of looking at farming through a long term lens – they have climate futures to hedge investments etc – raise the cost of borrowing for farmers during bad years and lower during good years.

      This is a pro-cyclical policy, and basically increases the risk parameters for the business. Alls you gotta do then is make the risk levels too high for non corporate/financial entities to operate, and then buy the private farmers out for pennies on the pound when ‘they’ fail.

      Magic!

      1. John C Carleton says

        I maintain land, wealth stolen by Usury is just that stolen wealth and land.

        America needs to just shut USA/DC down.
        Start over.
        Confiscate all stolen wealth and land in America.
        Give Fair Common Law Trials to the Usury and political prostitutes not smart enough to get while the getting was good.
        Followed by fair hangings for Usury.

        Return the farmland to the families it was stolen from if possible.
        All corporate farmland should be seized, and through a Land Grant process, American farm land returned to American families.
        Corporations made illegal in America under pain of death to a corporate employ.

        They can not hire people to do their dirty work, it won’t get done.

    2. DarkEyes says

      These are the facts indeed and the plan is not “was” but is a permanent actionplan to bring as much farmers as possible out of business (part of the actionplan) for as is known, farmers are an individuals and free people and that cannot be used in Rathschild’s plan.

      So, make the farmers go bankrupt, take their assets, possessions and specially their lands as a kind of debt-release (the farmer will not be able to ever pay his debts, according to Banksters plan) and Rathschild can optimistically write extra profits to his already existing more than USD 500 trillions proft exclusive the planet, yet.

  5. CHUCKMAN says

    I’m not sure it is the worst year ever for American farmers. Maybe so.

    Remember “the dust bowl” of the early 1930s?

    Interestingly, that horrible event – the result of drought – played right into reinforcing the Depression.

    So, too, will the stupid policies of Trump, part of which, of course, include the justified reprisals of China.

    His total set of tariffs and sanctions and threats can only ultimately have effects similar to those of the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930.

    Now, China has added the dust bowl.

    Make America great again, indeed.

    It’s really too bad that sheer incompetence isn’t a ground for impeachment.

    Trump actually believes he is the only guy around capable of playing real hard ball, which, of course, makes him a fool as well as an incompetent.

    1. Mary E says

      Exactly right and the truly awful thing is that the dust bowl was caused by nature and this travesty was designed and directed by the administration in Washington..to what end is what we are wondering…

  6. thomas malthaus says

    I’ll be conspiratorial for a moment and link last spring’s rains and flooding to our government’s geoengineering efforts across the US.

    When the chips fall, I prefer the land ultimately remain deeded to Americans.

    1. DarkEyes says

      If you prefer that you have to act fast and not wait.
      The APAC Government is going to do a big profit move in the flooded areas and bankrupt farmers as results of AIPAC Government’s trade war with China.

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